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Detroit actress/singer is ready for her close-up on Lee Daniels' 'Star'

At Thanksgiving, Jude Demorest, posted a photo of a Detroit billboard for Fox's "Star" on her Facebook page and added a message of gratitude for being one of the faces on it.

"This is a picture of the 8 mile exit off 94 in Detroit, Michigan where I grew up," wrote the young actress, who plays an aspiring girl-group singer on the new series from "Empire" co-creator Lee Daniels. "I passed this exit everyday growing up. Probably looking out the window, wondering when my life would change, when I'd make it out of 'this place.' What I didn't know then was that as dark as it can be and as badly as I wanted out, it was building me. That place made me who I am today. For every hard lesson I learned there, for the hunger it gave me, the music it instilled in me, the people it blessed me with."

Demorest, 24, plays Star Davis, who grew up in foster care and joins forces with her sister, Simone (Brittany O'Grady), and another young woman, Alexandra (Ryan Destiny), in an attempt to navigate Atlanta's music scene for fame and fortune. The trio is helped by a fierce mother figure (Queen Latifah) who's leery of a struggling agent (Benjamin Bratt) who's trying to use the girls to stage a comeback. It's a glamorous and gritty, sequin-studded, contemporary version of a classic showbiz story that also will feature appearances by the likes of Lenny Kravitz and Naomi Campbell.

There will be a special premiere of "Star" at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Fox. For Demorest, it represents an even bigger break than the success she's experienced at such a young age. The singer-songwriter told Vanity Fair how she left Detroit at 16 to pursue fame in Los Angeles, where she wound up working with famed producer L.A. Reid and co-wroting a Fifth Harmony hit, "Work from Home." She was chosen by Daniels for "Star" after a nationwide casting search.

For Daniels, the selection of Demorest, a white actress, is part of the statement on America's racial divide. He said last week on the daytime talk show "The Real" that the story "is told through a white girl's perspective because I felt that the country, instinctively, I thought needed to heal." The combination of white, black and biracial characters, according to Daniels, lends a multiculturalism that's part of a bigger message.

“I thought that it was important to address race relations in America. We are, truly I believe, in a civil war. And I think that when we understand that we’re all one that (we will) then understand America. And America is still to be understood by us," said Daniels. A 13-episode musical drama that strives to be a bridge to understanding is our kind of mid-season replacement.